Broadband troubles

Waiting... Looking up... Transfering...

[Syzygy]

I have no idea what the problem is but my home broadband connection is playing up badly. Don't know if it's down to the router/modem, the isp (useless.com!), or what.

Firefox is continually 'Waiting...', 'Looking up...' and eventually 'Transfering...' The same situation using Safari.

Try and load a page and the router/modem (which has been reset) does nothing for an age - 30 seconds and upwards before uncached pages load.

I've done the recommended speedtests suggested by the isp and, whilst this can take anything up to 5 minutes to connect initially and download a 1.7mb file, results show the connection running at a damn good speed.

I'm also unable to ping or traceroute, everything comes up as 'host unknown' - the rest of the world does not exist.

Any ideas? Any assistance here is gratefully received.

Thanks in advance.

Syzygy

[solly]

Sounds like a DNS server issue. If you have multiple ones listed in your TCP/IP Network preference pane, put one higher than the other. If that does not work, ask your ISP to give you their backup numbers and enter them into the Network pref pane.

[lesterofpupets]

Broadband reports has a "Show 326 speedtest sites ordered by location" link that will take you to speed test links around the world. close all proggies, and take one or two for a spin as a step to diagnose your problem.

Ping the dns servers and look for the one with the lowest "time=__ ms" numbers, and place it at the top...

Getting dns addys and suffixes from my ISP is like pulling teeth. I'm guessing the first tier tech may not even have access to them. They say, let the modem and your router do it automatically. Do you have your software CD?.. blah blah

HTH

[tstaheli]

Try this patch if you have OS X.

[apple.com...]

[Syzygy]

In lieu of the above patch (I'm still on 3.9), any other suggestions out there?

My ISP - useless.con - insist nothing is wrong their end; all the while my access is getting worse.

Endless speedtests at endless different sources show endlessly different results; dead slow, not bad, super fast - and all the while pages take minutes to load.

I've also reconfigured router & network settings, tried default dns, switched browsers, turned off firewall, turned on firewall, jumped up and down, and more...

Anything else I should be doing or considering that might alleviate this problem.

Thanks in advance.

Syzygy

[Syzygy]

A couple of days on and Mac email client cannot receive from my POP accounts - the passwords are rejected, so the dialogue box states.

I have checked and confirmed the incoming mail and smtp server info with useless.con - my ISP. They have also reset the existing passwords. According to them the problem is not at their end, but with the email client...

Whilst speaking with them I confirmed all connection/router settings.

The connection problem has now been referred to British Telecom (BT). The last time this happened, BT wanted to charge me around £60 for investigating (turning up) a problem that was the responsibility of my ISP... Deja vu, methinks!

Interestingly, past midnight and my connection is flying along without a care in the world...

According to Apple, the problem is indeed with the ISP - apparently the fact that a connection exists at all proves this. Apple's biggest concern was in emptying the cache in Safari and reseting to default. This seemed to make a difference for about five minutes - but not much.

Also, this evening I tried to download from iTunes but kept getting failure notices - it took umpteen attempts to download just one tune. It almost seems as if the connection is switching off and on every few seconds or so.

I'm stuck...

Syzygy

[DerekH]

I don't think you'll be allowed to tell us the name of your ISP, but I've moved from one large (now French owned) ISP beginning with a W to a slightly exclusive supermarket, also beginning with a W, who offers free-phone technical support 24/7.

On the occasions that I've had technical issues (not with broadband), these people have been superb, and even phoned *me* to check I was happy with their resolution.

Are you using MacOsX? The DNS thing is a red-herring if you are - you shouldn't need DNS entries.

DerekH

[Syzygy]

Am using Panther - 3.9. Shouldn't need DNS entries - can you elaborate?

Thanks,

Syzygy

[DerekH]

Darn - I can't find it when I look for it on the Apple help, but here's what my ISP says....

Primary DNS server: 80.189.94.2 (usually only required on early Macintosh and some Linux machines)
Secondary DNS Server: 80.189.92.2 (usually only required on early Macintosh and some Linux machines)

And so, running MacOs 10.4.3, I don't have any DNS server entries in my TCP/IP setup.

My former ISP gives exactly the same information - leave the DNS Server fields empty.
DerekH